Guild Wars 2

I’m a logic person. After buying 3 precursors, I have done the math, using statistics and the experience of other people to persuade myself to use the mystic forge instead of buying the precursors. Basically, the odds of getting a pre is .2 % from rares. Using a cumulative binomial calculator, the odds of getting 1 or more pre from 350 attempts is 50%….
Well, after 1100 attempts, I’ve convinced myself to quit. I know.. 100 trolls will say good ridden. Whatever. I’ll never buy an Anet game or all other affiliates. You have wasted my time enough already…

Basically, I’ll squander all my possessions to get that stupid pre. If I don’t get the amount that is in line with the stat, I’ll quit for sure. Which means about 2 to 3 in 500 attempts…

Don’t
ever
use
the
Mystic
Toilet
.

There is already going to be a different way of attaining precursors in the upcoming expansion.

Not quite a “good riddance”, but:

What would be the point of staying even if you did get a precursor? Why does this matter so much?

TL;DR: I was a clown that gambled my money and now blaming Anet for being dumb and not using the sure methods already provided in-game.

Sam Gem.1246:

I’m a logic person. After buying 3 precursors, I have done the math, using statistics and the experience of other people to persuade myself to use the mystic forge instead of buying the precursors. Basically, the odds of getting a pre is .2 % from rares. Using a cumulative binomial calculator, the odds of getting 1 or more pre from 350 attempts is 50%….
Well, after 1100 attempts, I’ve convinced myself to quit. I know.. 100 trolls will say good ridden. Whatever. I’ll never buy an Anet game or all other affiliates. You have wasted my time enough already…

You also had a 99.8% chance of not getting a precursor from rares, and a 50% chance of not getting 1 or more pre from 350 attempts according to your statistics. How’s that for perspective?

Statistics don’t guarantee anything, it’s just there to inform you.

Your mistake is using cumulative calculations. Each event in the Mystic Toilet is independent of others made. The chance is always the same, tiny one.

I am sorry you wasted your time on that thing instead of waiting to see what will be required to craft the one you wanted.

I recommend that OP take a class in statistics and read about gambling and chance before getting much older. It will be a supreme help to him to learn about these things.

Lindbur.2537:

Sam Gem.1246:

I’m a logic person. After buying 3 precursors, I have done the math, using statistics and the experience of other people to persuade myself to use the mystic forge instead of buying the precursors. Basically, the odds of getting a pre is .2 % from rares. Using a cumulative binomial calculator, the odds of getting 1 or more pre from 350 attempts is 50%….
Well, after 1100 attempts, I’ve convinced myself to quit. I know.. 100 trolls will say good ridden. Whatever. I’ll never buy an Anet game or all other affiliates. You have wasted my time enough already…

You also had a 99.8% chance of not getting a precursor from rares, and a 50% chance of not getting 1 or more pre from 350 attempts according to your statistics. How’s that for perspective?

Statistics don’t guarantee anything, it’s just there to inform you.

That’s not how stats work. Imagine you flip a coin 10 times. What are the odds you don’t get heads? Do you know the math? The odds are 99.9% chance you get at least one head.
The same formula is applied to the mystic forge. But at 1100 attempts, I have a 90% chance of getting a pre.

Astral Projections.7320:

I recommend that OP take a class in statistics and read about gambling and chance before getting much older. It will be a supreme help to him to learn about these things.

You’re wrong. Again, it’s technically possible to never get a pre from the mystic forge, but highly unlikely after 1100 attempts.
My beef is: Why me? Why is my account condemned?

Sam Gem.1246:

Lindbur.2537:

Sam Gem.1246:

I’m a logic person. After buying 3 precursors, I have done the math, using statistics and the experience of other people to persuade myself to use the mystic forge instead of buying the precursors. Basically, the odds of getting a pre is .2 % from rares. Using a cumulative binomial calculator, the odds of getting 1 or more pre from 350 attempts is 50%….
Well, after 1100 attempts, I’ve convinced myself to quit. I know.. 100 trolls will say good ridden. Whatever. I’ll never buy an Anet game or all other affiliates. You have wasted my time enough already…

You also had a 99.8% chance of not getting a precursor from rares, and a 50% chance of not getting 1 or more pre from 350 attempts according to your statistics. How’s that for perspective?

Statistics don’t guarantee anything, it’s just there to inform you.

That’s not how stats work. Imagine you flip a coin 10 times. What are the odds you don’t get heads? Do you know the math? The odds are 99.9% chance you get at least one head.
The same formula is applied to the mystic forge. But at 1100 attempts, I have a 90% chance of getting a pre.

Using this logic you should have a 50% chance to get a precursor, and a 50% to not get a precursor.
This isn’t a coin flip, there are not only 2 possible outcomes. There are hundreds of possible outcomes.

Sam Gem.1246:

Astral Projections.7320:

I recommend that OP take a class in statistics and read about gambling and chance before getting much older. It will be a supreme help to him to learn about these things.

You’re wrong. Again, it’s technically possible to never get a pre from the mystic forge, but highly unlikely after 1100 attempts.
My beef is: Why me? Why is my account condemned?

One guy who forged 53 precursors calculated that the drop rate using rares is 0.1% or about one every 1000 tries on average. http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1efwu1/just_some_more_mystic_forge_and_precursor/ If true then that means that 50% of people trying are not going to get a precursor by the 1000th try, but will take longer. Perhaps even substantially longer.

Even based on his calculations, not getting a precursor at odds of 0.2% over 1100 attempts happens 11% of the time. That’s not highly unlikely, those are low odds but if there are enough people throwing rares into the forge then it’s bound to happen to someone.

Of course, if the odds are not what he thought, then all his calculations can be thrown out.

Astral Projections.7320:

Sam Gem.1246:

Astral Projections.7320:

I recommend that OP take a class in statistics and read about gambling and chance before getting much older. It will be a supreme help to him to learn about these things.

You’re wrong. Again, it’s technically possible to never get a pre from the mystic forge, but highly unlikely after 1100 attempts.
My beef is: Why me? Why is my account condemned?

One guy who forged 53 precursors calculated that the drop rate using rares is 0.1% or about one every 1000 tries on average. http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1efwu1/just_some_more_mystic_forge_and_precursor/ If true then that means that 50% of people trying are not going to get a precursor by the 1000th try, but will take longer. Perhaps even substantially longer.

I had the rate at 0.0018. But even at 0.001, I’m well below that stat.

http://www.gw2shop.net/topic-2310-theorycrafting-precurseurs-et-forge-mystique

At 0.001, your experience represents one person out of every three. At 0.0018, that’s one out of seven.

That’s not a condemned account, that’s just tough luck.

Sam Gem.1246:

Astral Projections.7320:

I recommend that OP take a class in statistics and read about gambling and chance before getting much older. It will be a supreme help to him to learn about these things.

You’re wrong. Again, it’s technically possible to never get a pre from the mystic forge, but highly unlikely after 1100 attempts.
My beef is: Why me? Why is my account condemned?

Not just you mate. Try tossing in 2k rares and exotic greatswords and getting nothing.

It’s been explained to me that this is not solely in the realm of statistics though; it’s also tied to an engine that is unable to run “true” RNG. It’s quite difficult to learn a machine how to create true chaos, you need a lot of horsepower for that. So we’ve got a “simulated” or pseudo RNG, still very complex, which factors in certain unique properties affecting the outcome of RNG rolls. Such as, for example, the time of your forge attempt.

Sam Gem.1246:

You’re wrong. Again, it’s technically possible to never get a pre from the mystic forge, but highly unlikely after 1100 attempts.
My beef is: Why me? Why is my account condemned?

Highly unlikely? If the chance to get a pre is 0.2% it makes the change of not getting one 99.8%, if repeated 1100 times the chance of not getting any pre is 0.998^1100 ~= 0.111 or about 11% only a little less than throwing a coin 3 times and never getting head.

If the chance to get a pre is 0.1% (as said in another post) the chance of not getting a pre in 1100 tries is about 0.333 = 33.3 % about the change to get a 5 or 6 in one throw of a dice.

So yeah, it does not feel nice not getting something but your account is not “condemned”.

Wait for HoT and get the pre from the collection?

Sam Gem.1246:

I had the rate at 0.0018. But even at 0.001, I’m well below that stat.

http://www.gw2shop.net/topic-2310-theorycrafting-precurseurs-et-forge-mystique

throwing a coin, your chances are 50% heads, 50% tails, however you could easily get heads 20 times in a row before you see tails.

Every attempt your chance does not increase. It still stays 0.2% or 0.1%. Nobody accumulates chance (you could say that the likely hood of getting tails increases if you had heads 20 times in a row, but raw chance still stays 50%, meaning that continued string of unluck is still possible) . Meaning that even if the chance was 90% you can still have bad luck. In short – the same what everyone else said. Learn how chances work.

It’s like I said. It’s possible to never get a pre, but at 0.0018 chance from other people’s experience, the odds were in my favour with 1100 attempts.
90% chance is nothing to sneeze at…

Sam Gem.1246:

It’s like I said. It’s possible to never get a pre, but at 0.0018 chance from other people’s experience, the odds were in my favour with 1100 attempts.
90% chance is nothing to sneeze at…

I never try such things like this. I’ts kind of the same as buying 10 000 lottery tickets and being upset over not winning the pot. Favour or not, it’s still only 0.2% a try and you can still never get it, even if you try 100 000 times. It’s not a guarantee. There’s no switch that suddenly clicks with “this account was trying for a while now”. It’s just chance. Quite silly to be angry over chance.

BTW, I use a mysql database to document it. Precises numbers are 1043 attempts, 209 exotics, for an exotic drop rate of 20.04% with daggers only.
All trials combined: 1788 attempts, 346 exotics, 1 legendary for a legendary dr of .0006 and an exotic dr of .1936

Sam Gem.1246:

Basically, the odds of getting a pre is .2 % from rares.

No it isn’t.

Sam Gem.1246:

BTW, I use a mysql database to document it. Precises numbers are 1043 attempts, 209 exotics, for an exotic drop rate of 20.04% with daggers only.

So you’re up in arms and going to quit the game over something that you’d expect to see happen around 27% of the time?

Sam Gem.1246:

BTW, I use a mysql database to document it. Precises numbers are 1043 attempts, 209 exotics, for an exotic drop rate of 20.04% with daggers only.
All trials combined: 1788 attempts, 346 exotics, 1 legendary for a legendary dr of .0006 and an exotic dr of .1936

Have you never tried luck based things before or are you that used to winning?

sigh This is why people keep gambling. It seems to be impossible to believe the simple fact that the chance stays the same and does not increase. “I’ll try just once more. It must work for me sometime.” sigh

Sam Gem.1246:

I had the rate at 0.0018. But even at 0.001, I’m well below that stat.

http://www.gw2shop.net/topic-2310-theorycrafting-precurseurs-et-forge-mystique

On the site you linked, expand the entry titled February 12 2013. It reads:

also noteworthy: i havent gotten a single precursor from the last 7955 Rares. I’ve never done this with the intention of making profit but rather to get a correct dropchance. Still, i didnt expect to make a big loss, which unfortunately happend now.
Seriously, 8k rares, this variance is ridiculous..

How would you compare the precursor forge chance of the person who wrote that thread to your own? Was it

a) Higher than yours
b) Lower than yours
c) Equal to yours

Bertrand.3057:

Sam Gem.1246:

I had the rate at 0.0018. But even at 0.001, I’m well below that stat.

http://www.gw2shop.net/topic-2310-theorycrafting-precurseurs-et-forge-mystique

On the site you linked, expand the entry titled February 12 2013. It reads:

also noteworthy: i havent gotten a single precursor from the last 7955 Rares. I’ve never done this with the intention of making profit but rather to get a correct dropchance. Still, i didnt expect to make a big loss, which unfortunately happend now.
Seriously, 8k rares, this variance is ridiculous..

How would you compare the precursor forge chance of the person who wrote that thread to your own? Was it

a) Higher than yours
b) Lower than yours
c) Equal to yours

You haven’t read all of the site, partly because you’re not french. You looked at one section and made a conclusion, when, infact, the sum total of all the TRIALS expressed on the website is in the tens of thousands. Not rares crafted, TRIALS.

Sam Gem.1246:

You haven’t read all of the site, partly because you’re not french. You looked at one section and made a conclusion when the sum total of all the trials expressed on the website is in the tens of thousands.

you’re getting insulted over a chance. Look at that guy. He tried with 7 times more rares than you and still didn’t get it. Why are you looking at averages? Averages still mean that there’s a considerable amount of people on the unlucky spectrum.

It’s amazing how only one person has sympathy and the rest are in denial. What? Like you guys have more experience than me and have documented it.
Whatever. I’m staying the course. My account is cursed and unless some strange fortune change occurs that evens out the odds, I’m leaving.

You just dont get what chance means.

Anet cant do anything for you, its not their fault.

You knew there was a chance you’d end up getting an extreme result before you invested massive amounts of gold into RNG.

You knew very well what could happen, you went for it anyway.

I guess if you’d get 10 pres out of those rares you wouldnt leave the game because your account is “cursed” with unlikely Forge results huh?

Sam Gem.1246:

You haven’t read all of the site, partly because you’re not french. You looked at one section and made a conclusion, when, infact, the sum total of all the TRIALS expressed on the website is in the tens of thousands. Not rares crafted, TRIALS.

I don’t know what evidence you have to draw conclusions about my French literacy or my nationality. However, it’s not the point here.

You looked at an individual sample (a subset of your own experiments) and made a conclusion. I found a sample that was part of a much larger experiment, but which is comparable to the sample that you provided.

I’m not making any statements about averages, which was the purpose of the entire experiment posted on that website, I’m simply pointing out that the type of results you encountered are not really that extreme and have been encountered by others when using comparable sample sizes.

Perhaps if you attempt to answer the question that I posed, then you will understand how ridiculous your position is.

Sam Gem.1246:

It’s amazing how only one person has sympathy and the rest are in denial.
[…]
Whatever. I’m staying the course. My account is cursed and unless some strange fortune change occurs that evens out the odds, I’m leaving.

Rich.

I’m detecting some anguish. I taste a hint of entitlement… Oh wait! The sweet aroma of feeling misunderstood and a thirsting for attention!

Nothing quite like a well-matured and rich WHINE!

Oh and if you leave, can I has your goodies!? LOL!

There’s already a ‘strange fortune change’ in the works called Heart of Thorns. Shoot! You can stay now! Or is it that you like the losing really b/c it makes that one time that you win that much more of a rush? This is one of the psychological problems with gambling tbh. People will waste $2000 and then think they ‘won’ when they finally hit that $1000 pot. O.o So far you’ve spent what 1300 gold or more gambling for a Pre that costs less than 1000? Will you gamble another 1000 before it finally drops? Or do you think "OK! It HAS to drop this next time?

It’s one thing to do the math to see the odds. It’s another to expect that when the number of tries reaches the average number, then you will get it. There is the +/- consideration. Within the group of people trying, how many (in your case) don’t get it after 1000 tries or 2000 tries. You made a basic mistake in thinking that just because you calculated an average, that that average had anything to do with you.

I’m surprised no one already came up with… anyway:
I can haz your stuff?

€: darn, just realized hildegain.2106 was faster than me! kitten you!

lol

It’s a game kitten . Go outside, take a deep breath and hopefully come to the realization that it’s really nothing to stress about. 99% of the peeps here take such things as serious business when in reality it’s nothing. As in zero. I f your gonna stress out over an mmo I’d suggest you stop playing ,The Mystic toilet has been common knowledge for quite some time……

It was always mind boggling to me how some people have guts to gamble. How I look at that situation u basically have 3 options:

1. You get lucky and get prec early and save 500+ gold
2. You get prec at similar price of tp price
3. You don’t get prec and waste 1k+ gold

So what I ask myself is: Would I be more happy if i get it early, or would my sadness be greater if I didn’t get it? Well to answer that question, I bought 5 precursors for my legendaries from tp.

I feel some sympathy for you, but its hard for me to understand gambling mind.

Sam Gem.1246:

Lindbur.2537:

Sam Gem.1246:

I’m a logic person. After buying 3 precursors, I have done the math, using statistics and the experience of other people to persuade myself to use the mystic forge instead of buying the precursors. Basically, the odds of getting a pre is .2 % from rares. Using a cumulative binomial calculator, the odds of getting 1 or more pre from 350 attempts is 50%….
Well, after 1100 attempts, I’ve convinced myself to quit. I know.. 100 trolls will say good ridden. Whatever. I’ll never buy an Anet game or all other affiliates. You have wasted my time enough already…

You also had a 99.8% chance of not getting a precursor from rares, and a 50% chance of not getting 1 or more pre from 350 attempts according to your statistics. How’s that for perspective?

Statistics don’t guarantee anything, it’s just there to inform you.

That’s not how stats work. Imagine you flip a coin 10 times. What are the odds you don’t get heads? Do you know the math? The odds are 99.9% chance you get at least one head.
The same formula is applied to the mystic forge. But at 1100 attempts, I have a 90% chance of getting a pre.

thats just wrong. with a 0,2% chance its just a thing of luck or not. you could have one in the first 10 tries or you could have none in 4000 tries. statistic tries to bring a pattern in a rng system, but there is no pattern in rng. you have a really tiny chance to get one in a try and a huge to get none, no matter how often you try it.
for everyone that got 2 or more in 1000 tries there is one that got none. only in this way you get your average chances.

Astral Projections.7320:

It’s one thing to do the math to see the odds. It’s another to expect that when the number of tries reaches the average number, then you will get it. There is the +/- consideration. Within the group of people trying, how many (in your case) don’t get it after 1000 tries or 2000 tries. You made a basic mistake in thinking that just because you calculated an average, that that average had anything to do with you.

I respect your argument the most. Well done. But like I said, I’m already twice above the expected average. I will squander all of my resources just to even out that stat. And if I lose out, I’m gone.
I expect an outcome based on other people’s experience. If I don’t adhere to that expectation, then I can only conclude that my account is cursed. I’m reasonable, but a .0005 unfavourable difference is unacceptable.

If one received a precursor in the first, say 20 tries, but then does not receive another in the next 3000 tries….is that account extremely lucky, or cursed by the gods themselves???

Which is it if it is the other way around???

Ah well, it’s hard to fight superstition.

It’s like the Halloween minipet, Gwynefyrdd. The drop rate is 1:200,000. However there was one guy who posted that he opened up 1 million trick or treat bags before he got the mini. There were other people who also opened up large numbers without getting it and people who opened a few and got it. Calculating an average smooths outs such fluctuations around the mean. It doesn’t tell you what your actual results will be.

a logic person would understand that the results are not really off mark for the assumptions given. A logic person would also understand that luck is “unfair” by its very nature. Seems to me your self image isn´t really correct.

Sam Gem.1246:

It’s like I said. It’s possible to never get a pre, but at 0.0018 chance from other people’s experience, the odds were in my favour with 1100 attempts.
90% chance is nothing to sneeze at…

90% chance means 10% of people are outside that statistic 10% means a lot of people fail. I agree it sucks that its a gamble, but you expect too much out of a gamble.
Not saying you shouldnt be upset, but you shouldnt be upset that you gambled and lost, you should be upset that it is a gamble to bein with, if something is 90% chance, 10% of people will get screwed.

oh yeah and btw, your chances were 90% potentially, before you started, now, they are actually .1%-.2%

Sam Gem.1246:

It’s amazing how only one person has sympathy and the rest are in denial. What? Like you guys have more experience than me and have documented it.

I have three streaks worse than yours looking solely at my data on daggers, including a streak more than twice as long as the one you’re complaining about.

Bohantopa.5729:

Highly unlikely? If the chance to get a pre is 0.2% it makes the change of not getting one 99.8%, if repeated 1100 times the chance of not getting any pre is 0.998^1100 ~= 0.111 or about 11% only a little less than throwing a coin 3 times and never getting head.

I failed to get head on more than 3 occasions in a row.

I only use the Mystic Forge when it’s one of the dailies or when I have four items – say, four cheap rares or exotics – that I got as drops and aren’t really very much on the TP. Otherwise, why bother? There are better ways to spend one’s gold that will actually leave you with something to show for it. In fact, if one wants a precursor, one can these days actually buy a nice one for less gold than the OP spent attempting to coax one out of the Forge.

Bohantopa.5729:

Sam Gem.1246:

You’re wrong. Again, it’s technically possible to never get a pre from the mystic forge, but highly unlikely after 1100 attempts.
My beef is: Why me? Why is my account condemned?

Highly unlikely? If the chance to get a pre is 0.2% it makes the change of not getting one 99.8%, if repeated 1100 times the chance of not getting any pre is 0.998^1100 ~= 0.111 or about 11% only a little less than throwing a coin 3 times and never getting head.

If the chance to get a pre is 0.1% (as said in another post) the chance of not getting a pre in 1100 tries is about 0.333 = 33.3 % about the change to get a 5 or 6 in one throw of a dice.

So yeah, it does not feel nice not getting something but your account is not “condemned”.

this is another thing people forget, within a small set of trials, random is extremely unpredictable.
this means while the odds may be high on paper, in reality, they probably will not show a pattern that is representitive of the actual probabilities.

just like flipping a coin 4 times, doesnt give many people a pattern that represents the actual odds
or rolling the dice six times, doesnt tell you very much

even though 1000 tries seems like a lot, with a chance of .001, you have done the equivalent of flipping a coin twice, or rolling a die six times, in terms of normalizing the results.

phys.7689:

Bohantopa.5729:

Sam Gem.1246:

You’re wrong. Again, it’s technically possible to never get a pre from the mystic forge, but highly unlikely after 1100 attempts.
My beef is: Why me? Why is my account condemned?

Highly unlikely? If the chance to get a pre is 0.2% it makes the change of not getting one 99.8%, if repeated 1100 times the chance of not getting any pre is 0.998^1100 ~= 0.111 or about 11% only a little less than throwing a coin 3 times and never getting head.

If the chance to get a pre is 0.1% (as said in another post) the chance of not getting a pre in 1100 tries is about 0.333 = 33.3 % about the change to get a 5 or 6 in one throw of a dice.

So yeah, it does not feel nice not getting something but your account is not “condemned”.

this is another thing people forget, within a small set of trials, random is extremely unpredictable.
this means while the odds may be high on paper, in reality, they probably will not show a pattern that is representitive of the actual probabilities.

just like flipping a coin 4 times, doesnt give many people a pattern that represents the actual odds
or rolling the dice six times, doesnt tell you very much

even though 1000 tries seems like a lot, with a chance of .001, you have done the equivalent of flipping a coin twice, or rolling a die six times, in terms of normalizing the results.

This.